Landscape Design & Outdoor Living in Granite City, IL

It has to be fixed first, or the patio will fail. Granite City sits on the American Bottom, so most lots are flat with heavy clay underneath and nowhere for water to go. We regrade the problem area, tie the downspouts into buried drain tile, and pitch the patio to move water off it instead of trapping it against the house. Skipping that step is how you get a patio that heaves in three winters.

Usually yes. A lot of the older north-end lots have gates around three to four feet, so we run compact track loaders that fit through, and where nothing fits we barrow the base rock in by hand. We will tell you at the consultation if access is going to add labour to the price rather than surprising you with it later.

Carefully, and sometimes we will tell you not to. Cutting through a mature tree's root plate to hit a full base depth can kill the tree two or three years later. Depending on the species and how close it is, we will shift the layout, float the patio shallower over the root zone, or use a permeable build so the roots still get water and air.

Lot sizes here are smaller than in Edwardsville or Maryville, so projects tend to run smaller too. A straightforward patio off the back door is usually the low five figures. Once you add a seat wall, a fire feature, or drainage work, it climbs from there. We price it after we have seen the yard, never over the phone.

Both. Lawn care is where this business started and we still run weekly maintenance, fertilisation, aeration, and seasonal cleanups throughout Granite City. Plenty of our hardscape clients keep us on for maintenance afterwards, which is the easiest way to protect what you just paid for.

It depends on what you are building and where it sits on the lot. We handle the permit conversation with the City rather than leaving it to you, and we call in a JULIE locate before anything goes in the ground so the gas and electric lines are marked. If a project genuinely does not need a permit we will tell you that too.

Yes, and it is worth raising early. You generally cannot fill or redirect a ditch that carries other properties' water, so the design has to work around it. That usually means keeping structures back from the easement and using the grade you have rather than fighting it.